Islamic legal culture and slave-ownership contests in nineteenth-century Sahara

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 391-432

  Lydon, Ghislaine ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950243451     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails (Chapters 4 and 5)
2. C. W. Newbury, "North African and Western Sudan Trade in the Nineteenth Century: A Re-Evaluation," Journal of African History 7 (1966), 233-34
3. Stephen Baier, "Commercial Sectors in the Economy of the Nineteenth-Century Central Sudan: The Trans-Saharan Trade and the Desert-Side Salt Trade," African Economic History 13 (1984), 85-116
4. Ralph Austen and Dennis Cordell, "Trade, Transportation, and Expanding Economic Networks: Saharan Caravan Commerce in the Era of European Expansion," in Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola, eds., Black Business and Economic Power (Rochester, 2002), 88-113
5. Austen, "Marginalization, Stagnation and Growth: The Trans-Saharan Caravan Trade in the Era of European Expansion, 1500-1900," in J. D. Tracey, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1359-1750 (Cambridge, 1990), 311-50
6. E. Ann McDougall, "Salt. Saharans and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: Nineteenth Century Developments," in Elizabeth Savage, ed., The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (London, 1992)
7. Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998)
8. e siècle (Casablanca, 1994)
9. Marion Johnson, "Calico Caravans: The Tripoli-Kano Trade after 1880," Journal of African History 17 (1976), 95-117
10. and Jean-Loius Miège, Le Maroc et L'Europe (1830-1894), vol. 3 (Paris, 1962)
11. For an earlier summary of this debate, see Joseph Miller "Muslim Slavery and Slaving: A Bibliography," in Savage, ed., Human Commodity, 249-71
12. For discussions of this debate, with specific reference to Saharan slavery, see McDougall, "In Search of a Desert-Edge Perspective: The Sahara-Sahel and the Atlantic Trade, c. 1815-1890," in R.C. Law, ed., From Slave Trade to Legitimate Commerce: The Commerce Transition in Nineteenth Century West Africa (New York, 1995), 215-39
13. A. Ford "Report on the State of the Slave Trade and Slavery in Morocco" (1883), cited in Mohamed Ennaji and Khalid Ben Srhir, "La Grande-Bretagne et L'esclavage au Maroc au XIXe siècle," Hesperis-Tamuda 29, 2 (1991), 263
14. For information on slavery in Morocco, see Ennaji, Soldats, Domestiques et Concubines
15. and Daniel Schroeter, "Slave Markets and Slavery in Moroccan Urban Society," in Savage, ed., Human Commodity, 185-213
16. The scholar in question was Muhcombining dot belowammad Ibn al-Mukhtār Ibn Ahcombining dot belowmad Ibn Abubākar Ibn Ahcombining dot belowmad al-Bakkay al-Kuntī. See Ismael Hamet, "Litté rature arabe saharienne,"Revue du Monde Musulman 12, 11 (1910), 390
17. Moreover, Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton, 2002), 1-32, contains a rich collection of sources with a most useful introduction and chapter on slavery and Islamic law
18. and Ahmed Sikainga, Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (Austin, 1996)
19. Lydon, "Slavery, Exchange and Islamic Law in Nineteenth-Century Sahara," African Economic History 23 (2005), 115-46
20. For a review of the early history of the Mālikī doctrine, see Jonathan Brockopp, Early Maliki Law: Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam and His Major Compendium of Jurisprudence (Leiden, 2000); especially relevant is his discussion of Islamic law and slavery in the eighth century, 115-205
21. For a discussion of the main Maliki legal reference manuals used in West Africa, see Lydon, "Slavery." Information on Saharan Islamic curricula can be found in Lydon, "Inkwells of the Sahara: Reflections on the Production of Islamic Knowledge in Bilad Shinqit," in The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa, ed. Scott Reese (Leiden, 2004), 39-71
22. Wuld al-Sa'ad, Al-Fatāwā wa al-Tā'rikh: Dirāsat al-muthāhir al-hcombining dot belowayāt al-iqtiscombining dot belowādiya wa al-ijtimā'Iya fī mūrītā nīa min khilāl fiqh al-nawāzil (Beirut, 2000), 125-32
23. Al-Shaykh Abū al-'Abbās Ahcombining dot belowmad Ibn Khālid al- Nāscombining dot belowirī, Al-Istiqscombining dot belowā Li-Akhbār Dawul al-Maghrib al-Aqscombining dot belowā, vol. 5 (Casablanca, 1955), 131-34
24. See also a French version of this important text, translated and annotated by the author's son Muhcombining dot belowammad al-Nāscombining dot belowirī, "Kitab El-Istiqça li-Akhbâr Doual El-Maghreb El-Aqça," Archives Marocaines 34 (1936), 229-36
25. James Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990)
26. See also McDougall, "Salts of the Western Sahara: Myths, Mysteries, and Historical Significance," International Journal of African Historical Sources 23, 2 (1990), 250-51
27. Dāddah Wuld Idda, personal communication in Tīshīt (04/12/97). A majority of the enslaved population did not reside in the stone houses but in huts and shacks located near the palm groves on the outskirts of the town
28. Lt. Larroque cited in Rainer Oßwald, Die Handelsstädte der Westsahara: Die Entwicklung der Arabisch-Maurischen Kultur von Ŝinqītcombining dot below, Wādān, Tiŝīt und Walāta (Berlin: 1986), 356
29. Heinrich Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (1849-1855), vol. 3 (London, 1965), 704
30. Jacques-Meunié, Cités, 59
31. Abdel Wedoud Ould Cheikh, "L'évolution de l'esclavage dans la société maure," in Pierre Boiley et al., eds., Nomades et commandants: administrations et sociétés nomades dans l'ancienne A.O.F. (Paris, 1993), 182
32. Ould Cheikh, "L'évolution," 183-86. Milk-relations developed when enslaved wet-nurses breastfed free babies, which was common practice
33. McDougall, "Camel Caravans of the Saharan Salt Trade: Traders and Transporters in the Nineteenth Century," in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Paul Lovejoy, eds., The Workers of African Trade (Beverly Hills, 1985), 99-121
34. Klein, Slavery, 42
35. For a discussion of prices of females slaves to the 1850s, see Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson, "Competing Markets for Male and Female Slaves: In the Interior of West Africa, 1780-1850," International Journal of African Historical Studies 28, 2 (1995), 261-94
36. Pierre Bonte, "L'Emirat de l'Adrar. Histoire et anthropologie d'une société tribale du Sahara occidental," Thèse d'état, state doctoral thesis (Paris, EHESS, 1998)
37. McDougall, "Salt," 75
38. David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1985)
39. Yves Person, Samori. Une Révolution Diola, 3 vols. (Dakar, 1968-1975)
40. Presumably the rest would have been settled mainly in millet. Reported in the chronicle of Walāta (Paul Marty, "Les Chroniques de Oualata et de Néma," Revue des Etudes Islamiques, Cahier III (1927), 367)
41. Louis Faidherbe, Le Sénégal (Paris, 1889), 318
42. Edouard Guillaumet, Le Soudan en 1894, La Vérité sur Tombouctou, L'Esclavage au Soudan (Paris, 1895), 119, 122. Discussing the exchange of slaves for gun and powder this reporter makes the cynical remark that the wars of Al-Hcombining dot belowājj 'Umar and Samori were simply pretexts to generate slaves
43. See also Richard Roberts, Warriors, Merchants and Slaves: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley. 1700-1914 (Stanford, 1987), Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of the slave raids during the period of the Umarian state
44. Roberts, Warriors
45. James Searing, West Africa Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1993)
46. Lovejoy, "Slavery, the Bilād al-Sūdān and the Frontiers of the African Diaspora," in Lovejoy, ed., Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton, 2004), 1-34
47. The jurist in question was Ahcombining dot belowmad al-Scombining dot belowaghīr, one of Tīshīt's most reputable jurists. See Ould El-Bara, "L'asservissement."
48. James L. A. Webb, Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600-1850 (Madison, 1995)
49. McDougall, "A Sense of Self: The Life of Fatma Barka," Canadian Journal of African Studies 32, 2 (1998), 285-315
50. Madia Thomson, "Tikettin yat Familia/Once upon a Family: Family Origins and Slave Histories in Southern Morocco," The African Diaspora Archaeology Network Newsletter (December 2006)
51. McDougall, "Discourses and Distortions."
52. Faidherbe, Sénégal, 40-41
53. Guillaumet, Soudan, 150
54. For a discussion of sorcery in twentieth-century Mauritania, see McDougall, "The Politics of Sorcery and Slavery: Colonial 'Reality' in Central Mauritania (1910-1960)," in Chris Youé and Tim Stapleton, eds., Agency in Action in Colonial Africa: Essays in Honour of John Flint, (New York, 2001), 69-82
55. On Hunkarin see McDougall "Setting the Story Straight: Louis Hunkarin et un Forfait Colonial," History in Africa 16 (1989), 285-310
56. Sikainga, "Slavery and Muslim Society," 66
57. See Lydon, "Slavery," 124-26 for further information on this topic
58. Abdullah 'Alwī Hcombining dot belowājji Hcombining dot belowassan, Sales and Contracts in Early Islamic Commercial Law (New Delhi, 1997), 36-46
59. Mālik Ibn Anās, Al-Muwatcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowa (Book 31: 37)
60. and Ould El-Bara, Al-Majmū'āl al-Kubrā, Chapter on Sales (bāb al-bai'). The iqāla was seemingly more prevalent than the khyār. Future research will determine what explains these legal preferences
61. Mālik Ibn Anās, Al-Muwatcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowa (Book 31: 40); Khalīl, 145
62. Lydon, "Slavery," 127-28, 129-32
63. See also H. T. Norris, Shinqiti Folk Literature and Song (Oxford, 1968), 92-101
64. See also Catherine Taine-Cheikh, Dictionnaire Hcombining dot belowassāniyya Français, vol. 1 (Geuthner, France, 1988), 5